


We'll Have Each Other

by DunkinLove



Series: Beyond the Wall [1]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Explicit Descriptions of Street Food, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Gaby Gets Knocked Up, Gaby/Napoleon Friendship, Gen, Illya Kuryakin:Bed Intruder, Mild Smut, POV Alternating, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:47:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DunkinLove/pseuds/DunkinLove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaby is in denial until Napoleon helps her come to terms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Have Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> This can either be a stand alone work or the first part of my series [Beyond the Wall](http://archiveofourown.org/series/482179). It has been severely lacking in smut so I wrote a bit in this. 
> 
> This takes place in a universe where UNCLE is no more and everyone has returned to their agencies.

West Berlin, 1967

Gabriella Schmidt lay on a creeper, hidden from the world, taking out her frustration on the wheel axis of some shit box none of the men from the garage wanted to work on. It felt good to be back at her old profession, for a time, and pretend as though nothing from the past four years had happened. It was a temporary fix but working out the kinks of a car typically did wonders in distracting her from the repetitive thoughts that plagued her whenever she was idle. 

Gaby has been stationed in West Berlin for four months now, a sleeper agent awaiting assignments from MI6 that could take her to any part of the city. As much as she hated being this close to her former home, there was an odd comfort in being within only a few blocks of the Wall, in the same way it was comforting to see a growling dog behind the safety of a fence. It was only when she needed to go to the other side of the fence that things got complicated...

She could be summoned at a moment's notice to be thrown back into active espionage, but in the garage she didn't need to concern herself with spy agencies or superpowers. Just as the car's body was protected from the elements inside the garage; safe from rust and salt, frost and hail, Gaby's mind was shielded from the turmoil of the outside world. She could distract herself from dwelling on broken partnerships and regrets both personal and professional. She could just be her alias: Gaby Schmidt, the mechanic with no family or attachments or prospects. She could exist purely in the moment.

Except even that was proving more difficult as of late. She hadn't received an assignment in weeks and her nerves were frayed. She felt like she was spinning her wheels and each day her irritability only seemed to grow and her intrusive thoughts became obsessive. _What could they have done differently? Why didn't I try harder? Where could we have gone?_

_Why didn't you beg him to stay?_

She pulls on the wrench harder, trying to remove the rusted nut as though it were one of the invasive questions in her head. It slips and her knuckle scrapes painfully against the tire hub. The wrench drops with a clatter.

"Sohn einer Hündin!" she curses loudly.

In her rage Gaby picks up the wrench and throws it, sending it skidding under the car and across the floor. She puts her knuckle to her mouth, ignoring the taste of blood and motor oil on her skin. It was unbearably hot under the car and her skin beaded with sweat. She lay on the creeper for a moment, breathing deeply, hand on her stomach, willing herself to control her emotions. 

_How could you have let this happen?_

She bites down on her knuckle, eyes squeezed shut as she sucks in a shuddering breathe. She can't do this now, not when she's at work...but she feels the tears begin to well in her eyes-

"Schmidt!"

Gaby's eyes shoot open, staring up into the body of the car.

Hans, the owner of the garage, calls her again. She looks over and sees two booted feet enter the room.

"There's someone here asking for you," the crusty old man says.

She gives a long exhale before responding. "Send them in," she calls.

Gaby dabs at her eyes. It was already hard enough to get men to believe that she knew anything about cars or their maintenance, the last thing she needs is for a customer to go around talking about the crying lady mechanic he once met. 

She hears footsteps enter the room and she collects herself before rolling out from under the car.

"What can I do-" she stops when she sees Napoleon Solo, leaning against her workbench once again. Different side of the Wall, same smirk.

"Missed me?" he asks charmingly.

"I haven't missed that horrendous German," she says in English, but couldn't help but smile. It _was_ good to see him. Their reunions had been few and far between but not impossible by any means. It was the advantage of being a part of two agencies working for the same side. Unlike some...

"I was in London, when a former Earl let slip that he heard rumours of a very beautiful young mechanic that I just must see when I was in Berlin," he smiled.

Gaby rolls her eyes at his tacky compliment. 

"He didn't, however, mention the grease or whatever that is," he joked, gesturing at her coveralls.

She throws her rag at him, hoping some of the aforementioned grease would conveniently transfer to his expensive suit. It came away impeccable as always. 

"You came all this way to see me?" she asks, tidying her work space.

"Of course, and for business," he leaves it at that. They no longer worked on the same missions. No longer knew every detail of the other's life. 

"Let me guess, you want to take me to a chic little hotel where we can have a laugh over tea and biscuits?" she says as she bends down to get her wrench.

"If you'd like. This time we will avoid the route that has us chased by a giant over a minefield," he smiles, recalling their first meeting. 

Gaby doesn't share his mirth. She puts her tools away in her toolbox. She's glad to see him, of course, but sometimes it's like reliving the past all over again and it hurts just as much.

Sobering, he asks, "How have you been?" 

"Fine," she says quickly, carefully not looking at him. She feels her eyes begin to prick with tears again and it infuriates her. _What is wrong with you?!_

"You can always contact me, you know," he begins and it grates on her, "If you ever-"

"I'm fine, Napoleon!" she says sharply, and perhaps a bit too harshly. She swallows and calms. "I'll be fine."

He nods and leaves it. 

"Drink?" Napoleon asks as she wipes off her hands.

"Food," she said with a conviction that would brook no further argument.

"Food it is," he smiled.  
___

Napoleon had expected to go to one of the finer establishments in the city, maybe slip the host a few marks and be seated in a lovely booth by a window; treat Gaby like the highly skilled intelligence agent she was instead of the mechanic she was pretending to be. 

Turns out, what Napoleon would define as 'food' is quite different from what Berliner Gaby is willing to ingest for sustenance, enjoyment, or otherwise. That's how they found themselves plopped by a food cart next to a construction site off the Bundesallee, the strong meaty aroma from the vehicle wafting directly into his face. 

He coughs, watches Gaby with disgusted fascination. 

"How can you eat that?" he asked as she shovelled another piece of dripping currywurst into her mouth with a hum of satisfaction. "What is even on it?"

"Ketchup and curry powder," she said around another mouthful, "compliments of our glorious liberators after the war."

"So the east got the freedom of socialism and the west got currywurst. Seems like a pretty good deal," he says lightly.

"I can't get enough of it," she murmurs, sucking ketchup-curry sludge from her finger tips. 

Napoleon didn't want to say anything, but now that Gaby was changed out of her coveralls she was looking just a little bit more...filled out. Apparently she was getting more than enough currywurst during her residency in Berlin.

Gaby finished her portion in three minutes flat and leaned against the chain-link fence behind them with a satisfied sigh. She certainly looked in better spirits, the irritability from the garage apparently having evaporated. 

"It's a strange city, Berlin," Napoleon muses, "so many different people with different agendas crossing paths. I never really know who I'll run into here."

She hums in mild agreement, looking off down the streetlight drenched boulevard. 

"More spies here than in any other place in the world they say..." he hints.

He knows he is playing with fire, prodding at one of her vulnerable spots, but he can't not bring up the subject. Gaby is the only person in the world he can reminisce with about, well...Even Waverly on their increasingly rare encounters is quick to shoot down any reference to the man. Napoleon hates to admit it, but the truth is, he misses him, and he knows Gaby does too.

And misery does love company.

"Do you ever wonder if you'll run into...?" Napoleon asks quietly, brushing at an imaginary thread on his trousers. 

He waits a beat, but there's no response. He looks up and Gaby is still staring up the boulevard, suddenly very interested in the taxis rolling past. 

She doesn't have to wonder because she already had. He wasn't expecting this.

"When did it happen?" he asked in an even lower tone, "Where?"

She gave a heavy sigh, either embarrassed or annoyed, he couldn't tell.

"About two months ago I was assigned to tail some scumbag diplomat attempting to play double agent from Bonn to Berlin. He headed east for a meeting at Cafe Moskau and that's where I saw _him_ ," she smoothed out her skirt nervously. "Not unsurprisingly. That place is absolutely infested with _those_ types..."

"And he saw you?" Napoleon asked.

"Oh, yes," Gaby gave a little nervous laugh, "for a moment I was almost convinced he was going to chase me down and kill me, but I left immediately and he didn't follow..."

"And that was the last you saw of him?"

"No," she says evasively.

Napoleon raised his brows, urging her to go on.

She sighed again, resigning herself to his interrogation. "Then two nights later he's in my apartment..."

Napoleon's eyes widened. "You don't say." 

"That time I really did think he came to kill me!" she huffed.

Napoleon couldn't help but laugh in astonishment.

"It's not funny!" she hisses. "What if that had been anyone else from...you know. I shouldn't be that easy to find. It was terrifying! I almost shot him."

"But you didn't," he confirms.

"No."

"Then what happened?" he continues.

She chewed on her bottom lip and picked at her cuticles with avid interest.

"What happ-"

"What do you think?!" she threw her hands up in exasperation. 

_The dog_ , Napoleon thought, careful to not let the smirk form on his lips. And here Peril always spurned his fly-by-night conquests... 

"And the next morning?"

"Gone," she shrugged, putting up her wall of indifference. 

"He didn't give you anything? A way to contact...?" Napoleon prodded.

"Yes, Napoleon! He gave me his home address and his office number at Lubyanka. We're pen pals now!" she sneered.

"It was just a question-" he defends.

"Well, he didn't give me anything. Happy?!" She tightened her fist and bit her lip again, looking away.

Not indifferent after-all.

"I'm sorry," he offers, "I didn't mean to intrude. I just...sometimes I wonder where he is. It's hard not to have the guy grow on you after spending nearly every day with him for, what? Three and a half years? It's a shame it ended the way it did..."

"Well, it's over and done with," she says dryly, "let's just forget it ever happened. We should just forget about him altogether."

Napoleon looks at her and for the first time since their reunion he can see her underlying misery. This hasn't been easy on her. To have had her partnerships ripped out from under her and be left behind to pick up the pieces. Napoleon and Illya had known what they would be returning to. They may not have wanted it, but at least they knew what to expect. Gaby had been adrift, with no idea of what would become of her.

"Come on," he says standing, "let's go out and maybe we'll find some place to help us forget."

Gaby smiles slightly, and it's a start.

They agree on a club after making the rounds. She nursed her one drink for the few hours they were there but when the bands played she threw herself into the music, dancing with Napoleon like old times. It was good to see her smile again, in the midst of the crowd and the lights.

But between sets, when the music quieted and the crowd mingled, she'd get a distant look, lost in the depths of her own mind. It was unusual for Gaby to be so withdrawn into herself in a place such as this. Napoleon was becoming concerned, but before he could offer to leave, Gaby beat him to it. She was tired, she said, and wanted to go home. It was a quarter past midnight.

They headed back to Gaby's apartment in Kreuzberg. Napoleon had suggested his hotel, which was in a much leafier neighbourhood, but Gaby insisted she want to sleep in her own bed. That was fine too, he didn't mind crashing on the couch.

He makes them both a drink and they stay up a bit longer, listening to her record collection as they reminisced about the venues they used to go to in London, carefully avoiding any mention of the third member of their many outings. Soon she's curled up asleep in the armchair, as the vinyl crackles at the end of its track. 

Napoleon watches her for a moment, the slow rise and fall of her side as she breathes. 

"I'm sorry," he says, hit with a pang of sadness and nostalgia. He's not sure what he's sorry for precisely, though there are many things. He's sorry he didn't try harder to save their organisation, sorry that his past help lead to its downfall. He was sorry for things he had no part in; that she had been left by her entire family, that she had no home to go back to, that she had fallen for someone she could never be with. Mostly he was sorry that there was nothing he could do to help.

He picks her up and carries her into her bedroom, depositing her on the bed and pulling the covers up to her shoulder. She murmurs briefly in her sleep but doesn't awaken. 

Napoleon returns to the sitting room, propping a few pillows on the couch, preparing for sleep himself. As he walks to turn off the light switch he notices her drink sitting on the coffee table, still filled to the rim. Untouched.  
___

Gaby emerges from sleep just as the sky is beginning to grey with the first light of dawn. She is in her bed with no memory of how she had gotten there. She drifts in the syrupy state between sleep and wakefulness when she has difficulty determining what was dream and what was reality, past or present. 

_Please, Gaby..._

She extends her hand blindly across the bed but finds nothing. She huffs in frustration.

_It's only been a few hours since she returned home to find him in her apartment. A few hours since she had lunged for the gun strapped under the table, convinced that the apparition in her home was sent to exterminate her, only to be caught in the vice of his arms, palm over her mouth, begging her to calm. A matter of seconds for her to melt into the familiar warmth of him, to tear at him as they reunited in desperate madness on the floor of her sitting room._

_They find themselves back to her bed, stirring in the early morning, as they so often used to, hours before they would need to be at headquarters, when she'd awaken to gentle roaming hands and lazy coupling. She lay on her side with him behind her, a solid heat that she had badly missed for the past year. His large, perpetually cool hand runs slowly down her side as he sleepily noses at the back of her neck._

She says his name softly but there is no answer.

_He pulls her against him, and she can feel his need against the back of her thigh. She presses back, languidly encouraging him, despite her already sore body. A broad hand sweeps under her thigh, lifting it just enough to open her to him, filling her with one lazy movement. She gasps at the pleasant stretch, almost too much at this angle, but her body responds eagerly, gripping him tighter as a deep moan tore through his chest._

_It was reminiscent of their first time. Lying front to back, feigning sleep in some ramshackle safe house, skirt hiked and trousers shucked just far enough to expose each other. Their desperate grunts and moans muffled against the other's neck and palm so as not to alert Solo in the adjoining room. Neither able to face the other, as if it would help them avoid the consequences; allow them pretend it never happened in the morning._

_Of course they couldn't pretend. It was a mere hours before it had happened again. A matter of weeks before Gaby's flat became Illya's unofficial residence in London._

_Now, even when they had been separated by walls and orders and politics, they still rejected their better judgement. Perhaps foolishly, but they were still as helpless as they were after that first time._

_His arm snakes under her and a hand slips down, spreading her further, pads of his fingers rolling until they find her. Gaby jerks with pleasure, hissing at the exquisite sensitivity of his touch. He hums in satisfaction against her neck, her response encouraging him to thrust deeper._

_His hand grips bruises into her raised thigh as she shuddered for release. The relentless circular motion of his trigger finger and the thick pressure within making her buck back against him, ashamed to hear herself keening like an animal in heat. She rakes her nails up his thigh, encouraging and punishing him both._

_He too is balanced on a knife's edge._ Pozhaluysta...Please _, he whispered in her ear, his desperate plea juxtaposed by the unrelenting rhythm of his body._

_Illya lays his teeth into her shoulder when he comes, the aftershocks of her own orgasm still clenching him relentlessly. With a groan, he releases her leg, slumping against her, panting hotly at the back of her neck. He brings his arm around, holding her tightly, as though he'll never leave._

_Maybe this time he won't._

She opens her eyes with a start and she's alone. Her back is cold and the empty ache of the past six weeks returns as she emerges from her dream-state. She rolls over as reality hits her and the now familiar sensation of unease roils through her body. She asks herself the same questions every time the feeling strikes her.

_How could you have let this happen?_

_What are you going to do?_

\---

Napoleon wakes when he hears stirring in the other room. He checks his watch. It's early, but Gaby has never been one to sleep for very long, so he thinks nothing of it. He turns over on the couch to drift back into sleep when her door flies open and she runs across the sitting room, foot catching on the edge of the rug, shifting the coffee table and knocking over her drink from the night before. 

Napoleon sits up, startled, but before he can ask what is the matter she regains her balance and tumbles into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. He sits in stunned silence for a moment before he hears her retching from behind the door. Her drink is still dripping from the table onto the floor. Alcohol can't be blamed for this. 

Napoleon begins to put the pieces together, rubbing his face in shock. This can't be happening, not now...

He waits for her to finish her second bout. She sounds miserable and he wishes there was something he could do to assist her but he knows she'd want privacy. When she quiets he risks cracking the door to the bathroom open.

She puts the toilet lid down with a clatter, then drapes herself over it, breathing heavily, her forehead covered in a fine sheen of perspiration.

"Gabs," he says quietly, sitting on the bathroom floor next to her, rubbing her back, "how long has this been going on?"

She swallows, scrunching her eyes shut as she thought. "A week and a half, maybe a little more," she sniffs. 

"Have you gone to a doctor?"

She buried her face in the bend of her arm but shook her head. 

"I really think you should go. I'll go with you-" he suggests.

"I can't!" she looks up, an expression of terror on her face that he hadn't seen even when they had had loaded guns pointed at them, "I can't do it!"

Napoleon isn't sure whether she means visiting the doctor or something much more, but he soothes nonetheless. "It's okay, we'll figure it out..."

She looks at him for a moment before she breathes in a shuddering breathe and suddenly she's crawling into his lap. He doesn't say anything for a long while, just holds her against him as she shook in his arms, tears soaking the front of his shirt. 

When she exhausts herself and slows her erratic gasps she speaks. "I didn't want to think this was real," she sniffs, wiping her eyes with her knuckles, "that this had actually happened. I was hoping it would just go away."

Napoleon leans forward and tears some toilet paper from the roll and hands it to her. She quietly thanks him as he continues rubbing her back.

"Is he the only possibility?" Napoleon asks.

She nods, dabbing at her eyes miserably. 

In a brief moment of madness Napoleon almost offered marriage, to raise the child as though it were theirs. He certainly wouldn't make the best father and an even poorer husband but he had the means to support them and Gaby could avoid the stigma of single motherhood. This wasn't the result of some anonymous one-night-stand, however, and he feels making such an offer would be unfair to everyone involved. If Illya only knew...

"We should get you to a doctor. Confirm everything, then you can decide what to do," he says.

"Why is this all left up to me?!" she cries, "Why does it have to be so damn unfair?"

"You're not alone in this," Napoleon says.

"Of course I am!" she snaps, "he won't even know."

"If you decide to go through with this, you'll need to tell him."

"How? I have no idea where he is or how to get a hold of him!" she says, wiping tears off her face.

"I'll figure it out. I don't know how or when, but he'll know. He'd want to know," he promises.

"It's not like it matters," she huffs, "they're never going to let him raise a child with a defector turned foreign intelligence agent. They'll quietly kill all of us before they let that happen," a thought crosses her mind and she looks up at him in panic, "What if he tries to take it away from me?"

"He wouldn't do that Gaby, and you know it," he says. "I'm not going to lie to you and say this will be easy, that it won't be dangerously complicated...but I think if you're smart about it you will be able to manage. If that's what you want," he consoles. "But in the meantime, we need to get you to the doctor, before we jump to any conclusions."

She nods helplessly, and allows him to hold her for awhile, curled up on the bathroom floor.

It wasn't his battle to fight but Napoleon vowed then and there he wouldn't let her face it alone. He'd do what he could, as limited as it might be. For her. For the both of them. Or, eventually, he thought, all three of them.  
___

Gaby spent the afternoon waiting at the clinic, fighting the urge to stand up and leave as though exiting the building would put a stop to the situation, that her body would cease obeying the commands of biology. She asks Napoleon to meet her when she is finished. It seems unfair to force him to be here and cruel to...well...that didn't matter, did it? _He_ had no idea any of this was happening.

She forces herself to stay, waiting for her name to be called, watching the other women enter and leave, children in tow as panic rises in her throat. She's not in anyway prepared for this.

Her name is called and she is administered the test. The results would take a few days to appear, they said, but it didn't matter. She already knew.

Napoleon does his best to distract her. Taking her out to dinner, speaking about every insignificant thing his mind lands on. She appreciates his efforts and feels sorry that he has to be involved in any of this mess at all. Something she never should have let happen in the first place.

They make an early night of it, unsurprisingly. They go home to watch TV, her body stiffening slightly every time a child appeared on screen or the words 'mother' or 'father' are mentioned. 

She's exhausted, mentally drained, and she excuses herself for bed. Napoleon lets her go.

Gaby crawls into her wide bed, turning off the light. Despite her weariness, sleep eludes her and she finds herself acutely aware of every part of her body. She dares to place a tentative hand on her belly. It doesn't feel much different but she has an irrational feeling that she is no longer alone. There is a little bud of _something_ present, within her, that she can't explain.

"Hello," she whispers and an unexpected warmth spreads through her.

She turns to curl around herself and is hit with a wave of fierce protectiveness, unlike anything she had ever felt before. If she was going to do this, she refused to be half-hearted. She wouldn't leave like everyone in her life had left her. She wasn't going to abandon whoever this would end up being. If this is everything she was going to have then she was going to dedicate her life to it, even if she was never given the same consideration. And even if he couldn't be here, she'd at least have a part of him. 

_We'll have each other_ , she thinks.

And the thought makes her smile, even as the tears stream down her cheeks.

**Author's Note:**

> Illya Kuryakin: _He's climbin' in your window, he's snatchin' your people up..._ (you have no idea how much I wanted to name this fic after a lyric from the 'Bed Intruder' song)
> 
> I'd like to note that everything in the last section is from Gaby's POV and I am not in anyway trying to make a point about life/autonomy/or any of that crap/etc. It's just her individual feelings in the moment.
> 
> I have several Tumblr [fic aesthetic boards](http://nostalgicexpatriate.tumblr.com/tagged/fic-aesthetic) for this series, if you're into that sort of thing...(some of the pictures may be considered spoilers, be warned.)
> 
> Next Part: [Strangers Passing By](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7108447)


End file.
